Summary:

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) is an organization focused on achieving aggressive and well-defined mid-to-long term clean energy goals for the United States of America. In that context, EERE has established multi-year plans and roadmaps. EERE focuses the majority of its resources on a limited number of "highest probability of success" pathways/approaches to ensure that the program initiatives are supported at a critical mass (both in terms of dollars and time) for maximum impact. This roadmap-based approach is one of EERE's greatest strengths, which can create challenges in recognizing and exploring unanticipated, game-changing pathways/approaches which may ultimately be superior to the pathways/approaches on our existing roadmaps.

To enhance the responsiveness of the roadmap approach, EERE is issuing "Incubator" Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) within its existing Offices and programs to support innovative technologies and solutions that could help meet existing goals but are not represented in a significant way in the Offices' existing Multi-Year Program Plans (MYPPs) or current portfolios. The Incubator programs will allow EERE to assess new technologies for their potential to be "on ramped" to future MYPPs. Successful incubator projects will reduce the risk associated with potentially breakthrough approaches and technologies so that they could be viable candidates for inclusion in future program roadmaps.